1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to generating threshold events from heterogeneous network elements on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network administrators receive a large amount of information while monitoring a network. Frequently, the network administrators are only concerned with being notified of problems with the network, for example, when network utilization exceeds 60 percent. To accomplish this, the network administrators have a threshold in mind, e.g., 60 percent utilization, and need to program a system to monitor for such utilization.
Previously, network administrators had to individually program data monitors to monitor individual network elements by entering a raw threshold value that is recognized by the network element and the data monitor. For example, in an Ethernet network that runs at 10 megabits per second, 6 megabits per second is 60 percent utilization, and the network administrator would previously have to individually program the data monitor to monitor the network element for situations where utilization exceeded 6 megabits per second. This involves manual calculations on the part of the network administrator.
Individually, this is not a daunting task. However, when a network administrator is faced with a plurality of heterogeneous network elements, programming a plurality of data monitors to monitor a plurality of heterogeneous network elements is very time consuming. In addition, user error may be introduced if the network administrator erroneously performs the calculation of the raw threshold value, as the network administrator must be knowledgeable of the underlying hardware architecture of the network and network element to be monitored.
Further, the network administrators had to wait for the data monitors to output a measurement after a predetermined interval, preventing the network administrator from knowing about a threshold violation until the expiration of the interval. If the interval was set, for example, at 10 minutes, and the threshold violation occurred one minute into the interval, the network administrator would not be notified of the threshold violation until the expiration of the interval, i.e., nine minutes later.
Therefore, a system whereby a network administrator can enter a threshold, have the threshold translated into a raw threshold value regardless of the data monitors and heterogeneous network elements involved, have the data monitors monitor the heterogeneous network elements for violations of the raw threshold value, have the violations translated back into a user-friendly format, and have the network administrator notified of the translated violations as they occur is needed.